


his cats (plural) are fine

by bwyn, Yuisaki



Series: rings, dimes, and toys [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Quests, a tag im sure will be used Often in the future, im just glad everyone's pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 07:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuisaki/pseuds/Yuisaki
Summary: “Where the hell do you get a printer?” Pidge mutters, walking out of the library. “Like, where?”“Best Buy, I’d guess,” Keith says, falling into step with her. “Or maybe the university’s gift shop if you’re willing to pay in bone marrow.”“I’m quite fond of my bone marrow, thanks.”“Well, Best Buy it is, then.”***In which Pidge displays total dominance over all her friends, and there's a printer.





	his cats (plural) are fine

**Author's Note:**

> this is our dual favourite thus far. you will see why, i'm sure. :3c

**_HOLY THREE ITEMS: FRIENDSHIP DESTROYER OR ACCURATE PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT?_ **

By Lance Espinosa

The ring, the dime, and the toy. These three words hold _power._ The same amount of power as the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from Narnia, or maybe as Princess Allura’s name, the power of which far outstrips any mere nuclear warhead.

These items are magical. Strong. Breaks friendships and causes self-reflection all at once.

However, a recent debate has sprung throughout the campus where students and teachers alike are asking themselves—and each other—if the items are objectively good, or objectively evil. On one hand, it degenerates relations. On the other hand, could it really cause such a consequence of catastrophic measures if the friendship fraying process hadn’t already begun without the items’ interference?

For example, I talked to a recent friend regarding his experiences with the Mystical Three Items. When prompted by the Items, Matthew Holt—or as many students recognize as the Squirrel Guy and the founder of the Eighty-Six Squirrels hoisted on the walls of the Tree Rat Shrine—chose the dime.

Now, I didn’t write that just to show the readers that Matthew Holt is a shallow, gold digging bastard, or anything of the sort. I would like to put a disclaimer that, before any readers kick up a fuss in the comments, at the time of the choosing, his paycheck for squirrel catching had yet to come in and as a result had not caught a single squirrel for five days.

“It’s not like my personality is digging for gold, or if I use the squirrels to help me find money,” said Holt, a master’s student with a degree in Zoology. “But the thing about the items is that when you’re faced with them, you choose whatever you desire in your heart at that moment. I already had the other two… I was happy enough catching squirrels, and as for love, well… anyways, I was broke, so I chose the dime.”

Holt added that if an opportunity to choose the items came again, he “wouldn’t choose the dime, but maybe a toy. Or the ring. Who knows.”

Yet a misunderstanding was all it took to lose a precious friend.

“I blocked him on all my social media,” said a student, speaking under the condition of anonymity, who we’ll call Gonerva. “I couldn’t stay friends with someone who was just looking for money. My parents are quite rich, you know, and so is my boyfriend, so after I found out that he chose the dime, I cut off all contact. I couldn’t trust someone like him.”

Although some students like Holt swear off the Three Items, calling them “friendship annihilators,” others believe that it is the second-best method to accurately assess people, other than Her Delivering Activeness.   
  
“Listen, the MBTI is awful,” said Physics professor G. A. Thace. “I personally think that while it’s not the worst of personality tests, it’s still not as correct as the Three Items. These Items, they judge your personality from the most deepest, subconscious part of you, so whatever item you choose—while being affected by your desire at the time—still reveals your personality enough. And it does so quickly and precisely.”

I personally have yet to encounter the Three Items, so I can’t say for sure from experience that they’re terrible and wrong and too quick to judge, or if they are infallible in getting other people to know you—and even you—to know yourself.

Until then, we’ll all just have to do as we do when confronted with the items, and decide with our gut.

[ _For more information on the Three Items, visit Psychology professor G. L. Ulaz, where he can most commonly be found in the B-Mart, the Communications building, or swinging from the auditorium curtains.]_

 

* * *

 

Pidge watches Rolo take off his prosthetic leg and slap a man’s ice cream right out of his hands with it.

The only reason she is blessed in the first place to witness such a thing, which happens in a split second before cold creamy goodness meets dirt and Rolo reattaches his leg, is because Pidge watches people. Sometimes for hours at a time, computer open in her lap, watching.

There’s something obscene about the campus that no amount of discussion with other locals can explain, and it’s in an effort to put a voice to this feeling that exists simultaneously in the pit of her stomach and the base of her skull and the tips of her fingers that she writes her blog posts in the first place.

That, and she just really likes the validation.

Which she will, of course, never admit to. Blog posts and Rolo flailing a false limb aside, Pidge finds sitting outside while the campus mills about like a hivemind to be somewhat reassuring.

In an effort to assuage feelings of impending doom, Pidge turned to sightseeing in the courtyard between the library and the science complex. Unfortunately, doom finds her anyway, and no amount of legs smacking frozen treats is going to hide her.

In other words, Pidge finds herself with writer’s block.

Ideally, Pidge can sit around for an hour or two at some remote location and, by the pure miracle of divine intervention, witness something of note that she can speedwrite and post to her blog within a couple of days.

On a campus where a whole shrine is dedicated to eighty-six tree rats, a girl tells fortunes in exchange for completing quests, and a goat wanders the campus, it’s not like it’s _hard_ to find something to write about.

It’s just that this time… it’s hard.

She continues watching Rolo in hopes that something of note will happen, like a prolonged confrontation with the ice cream man, but no such luck. He sits down on the edge of the fountain, pulls out his phone, and starts typing.

Boring.

She slides her gaze away from Rolo and towards Zethrid up on the third floor of the Engineering building. The buff fourth year looks around furtively, eyes narrowed, before she reaches into her beige trench coat and lifts… something small and furry. A cat. It’s a tiny cat, not some man-eating lizard with fur.

Boring.

In the far left of the square, Acxa, carrying a printer with one hand, a stuffed chameleon toy in the other, and a paper mache ship crammed between her neck and shoulder. Eh. Far right, Sendak hoisting his dumb briefcase and a stack of papers in his arm. He doesn’t drop it and spontaneously fall into a vegetative coma. Boo. Way in the back, in the shadows of the Communications building, Keith, tilting his head up at the sky.

Hm.

She whips out her phone and shoots him a quick text.

Me [12:24 PM]:

_what are u doing_

She waits a second, then sends a series.

Me [12:25 PM]:

_hey daniel_

_hey_

_hey_

_heyheh_

_yeh_

_eyheh_

_yehyehy_

quiche bong [12:26 PM]:

_oh my god HWAT_

There it is.

Me [12:26 PM]:

_come here_

quiche bong [12:26 PM]:

_where the fuck is here_

Me [12:26 PM]:

_turn about 49 degrees and look forward_

Even from this distance, she can see him frowning. But he still turns, looks forward…

 _Bzzt_.

quiche bong [12:27 PM]:

_you are the creepiest fucking manchild i have ever had the displeasure of nkwoing_

_oh my fuckign god_

Me [12:27]:

_:3c_

When she looks up, Keith is standing over her, that dark frown still in place.   
  
She blinks. “How’d you get here so fast?”

He blinks back. “I’m tall.”

“Ah,” she says. “That would explain it.”

“What do you even want?” Keith glances over his shoulder, chin tilted up.

Pidge stares at him until he looks back down at her. “Yeah, hi. I’m in a funk and I’m thinking of asking Narti for—what are you looking at, Daniel?”

“Hm?” Keith’s drifting gaze returns to hers. “Oh. Uh, I heard something.”

“You heard something,” Pidge repeats.

“In the—nevermind. Just music. What were you saying?”

“Narti. Help. Quest.”

“Ah,” says Keith. “Narti. Help. Quest.”

“Yes,” says Pidge. “And you’re coming with.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“Think of it as a punishment for not listening to me the first time.” She shrugs. “Or a favor.”

“Our friendship has never been about favors or goodwill,” Keith says flatly. “This is a blatant lie.”

“I was trying to be nice.”

“Don’t,” Keith tells her. “Do not.”

She grins and types a quick message to him.

 _Ping._ Keith looks down.

Me [12:30 PM]:

_:3c_

“Stop that.”

_Ping._

Me [12:30 PM]:

_:3c_

“I said _stop.”_

 

* * *

 

The questmaster (ie. fortune teller (ie. Narti)) is easy enough to find, especially since the year before when she cleared out a corner of the library for herself to occupy during most hours of the day. Otherwise it’s just a matter of asking anyone else on campus if they’ve seen her; a woman that roams around with a cat perched on her shoulder is generally easy to spot.

As luck would have it, Narti is present in her usual domain on the third floor, nestled beneath the tall windows between the neurochemistry and pathobiology stacks. She’s surrounded by bean bags and textbooks and a rather hefty looking safe with a tassled shawl tossed over it.

When Pidge explains her problem, Narti mulls it over for less than five seconds before lifting her hands away from her purring cat, moving her fingers against her palm.

 _Printer_ , signs Narti.

“Printer,” Pidge repeats. Narti nods. “You want me to acquire a printer.” Another nod.

Well, among the stories of the more infamous quests that Narti can give, acquiring a printer isn’t the worst of them. It’s doable, accessible, fairly easy. Just—

“Where the _hell_ do you get a printer?” Pidge mutters, walking out of the library. “Like, _where?”_

“Best Buy, I’d guess,” Keith says, falling into step with her. “Or maybe the university’s gift shop if you’re willing to pay in bone marrow.”

“I’m quite fond of my bone marrow, thanks.”

“Well, Best Buy it is, then.”

Pidge stops just outside of the building’s entrance. “No,” she hisses. Keith raises an eyebrow at her, and she shakes her head vehemently. “There is no way I’m paying a single penny for this quest, or any quest.”

It must be a Pavlov’s dog sort of reaction, like the bell and the salivating dog, except the bell is replaced by ‘money’ and ‘university’ in the same sentence, and the salivating by the inexplicable, uncontrollable rage at the student exploitation in the system.

She’ll never buy anything from their university’s gift shop. So logically, Best Buy would be the easiest option, not to mention much cheaper. But the mention of the university gift shop, combined with the fact that Narti—bless her—is a resident and student and is therefore associated with the university, Pidge has absolutely no desire to spend any money for the university’s dick.

“ _No,”_ she says again. “There has to be an easier way. One that doesn’t involve getting on your scooter—”

“Motorcycle.”

 _“—scooter,_ driving to the nearest Best Buy, and paying actual godforsaken currency to acquire a printer,” Pidge finishes. “No. No way.”

“That’s the easiest way there is,” Keith says, exasperated. He checks the watchtower and grimaces. “Also, I gotta dip in like, twenty minutes for class.”

“We are going to find a goddamn printer in twenty, then. _We are going to find a printer in Macklemore time.”_

“Macklemore,” Keith mutters, disbelieving. 

Pidge does not have time for Keith’s continued dissent. A bit of faith would be nice, but Pidge is not Her Sunny Cleanliness, and so she cannot expect it, but merely demand it on her own time. Whether or not Keith develops faith in Pidge, they still need a printer.

Something tickles the back of Pidge’s brain. A thought.

“Paper mâché,” says Pidge, stopping in her tracks.

Keith practically jumps to the side to avoid tripping over her. “Tell me you don’t want to build a printer out of paper mâché.”

“I don’t want to build—” Pidge cuts off and inhales sharply. “ _Chameleons.”_

“Okay, Pidge, I really wish I understood what the fuck you’re talking about, but—”

Pidge slaps her palm flat against Keith’s chest, effectively shutting him up, and bundles the fabric of his shirt in her fist.

“Acxa has a printer,” she says.

Keith stares at her. “Do… you want to steal it?”

A moment of consideration. “Yes.”

“What.”

Then Pidge strides on with new purpose, dragging Keith behind her by the shirt until he matches her pace. In the courtyard Pidge stops, turns, tries to remember where Acxa was headed with the target. She swears the other woman was headed towards the arts building, and she starts in that direction—

—until suddenly there’s the sound of something big and bulky shattering on the ground.

They turn around. Scattered in pieces and pieces of pieces across the asphalt is… something. Some mechanical thing. Pidge squints. A square thing.

“I SAID MY KEYS,” Rolo yells. “I SAID MY FUCKING KEYS.”

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID PRINTER,” shouts Nyma from the second floor window.

No way.

Pidge stares at Keith and finds his shocked eyes staring back.  

“WHY WOULD I SAY PRINTER,” Rolo shouts. “OH MY FUCKING GOD.”

“Well,” says Keith finally, “we found a printer. It’s right there. On the ground. In pieces. Broken.”

Pidge blows out a quiet breath. “Daniel,” she says. “Daniel, you know what you gotta do.”

“Oh no,” Keith says.

Pidge smiles, and then suddenly she’s gone, sprinting towards Rolo. “Hey!” she yells, waving her arms frantically. “Hey! Are you gonna use that?”

“What, the printer?”

“Yeah?”

“No, it’s fucking broken, what do you think? AND I STILL DON’T HAVE MY GODDAMN KEYS.”

“I’LL GO FIND ANOTHER PRINTER.”

“NYMA—OH MY GOD—”

Pidge waits approximately five seconds for them to disappear from the square before turning to Keith. The fire is lit now. Bonfire burning. Land in all consuming flames. “Let’s take it and run.”

“They said they abandoned it,” Keith starts, eyebrows crinkling. “Why—”

“No time for that,” she snaps, hurriedly picking up pieces and shoving them in her bag and jacket and shoes. “Let’s go, Daniel. They might come back.”

“ _Pidge, I don’t have enough fucking pockets for this—”_

“THEN SHOVE THEM IN YOUR PANTS AND DIE LIKE A MAN,” Pidge yells. Then she spots them. Her unfortunate victims.

Hunk. Lance. Lingering outside the Comm building, clearly unoccupied. Perfect. Lance's eyes make the mistake of meeting Pidge's.

Pidge holds up five fingers in the air, as high as her stubby arm can go, and starts lowering a finger one by one.

Lance’s mouth closes mid-sentence. Hunk turns around. By the time she gets down to two fingers, they’re sprinting.

“Great,” she says, to the pair of them panting at her feet. “Help me pick those up and let’s move.”

“ _Where. Why.”_

“Also, who the _fuck_ is capable enough to fix _this?”_

“We’re going back to the library for Narti,” she informs Hunk, and turns to Lance. “As for your question, this guy right here”—she jabs Keith in the ribs, and watches as he promptly drops the pieces being shoved down his pants and curses—”will fix it. No worries.”

“Oh my god,” says Lance.

“Now, up and at ‘em. We got pockets, pants, and shoes to fill, and a library to get to.”

“This better be fucking worth it,” Keith mutters.

To which she leans over to him and whispers, “Goats.”

Keith, bless him, remains silent on the entire trip back.

 

* * *

 

 

“So,” Hunk says, looking over the table where the pieces and pieces of pieces of the printer are lying scattered, “how are we going to fix this?”

Lance turns to him, eyes wide and almost betrayed. “I thought you knew everything, bro.”

“In theory,” Hunk corrects. He stares at one gleaming piece in particular and exhales. “In theory.”

They take another moment to stare at the collection. Pidge’s laptop is out, several tabs of videos depicting printer fix-its open. None of them appear to be giving her much inspiration, if the curl of her lip is anything to go by. Hunk is wondering if the multiple tubes of superglue in his bag will be able to fix even just the one corner. Some of the pieces don’t even look like they belong.

Out of the blue, Keith says, “Let’s wing it.”

“That’s _definitely_ not going to work,” says Lance. To prove his point, he grabs two random chunks and holds them upright on the desk. And then adopts a high soprano. “Oh, Mr.Plastic, you’re so... _plastic-y_. I sure wish we could go on a date.” Then deep bass, or as deep as Lance can manage, which really isn’t all that deep, “What’s stopping us, Ms…” He looks at Pidge.

“Polymer?”

“Ms. Polymer.”

Hunk gently rests a hand on Lance’s arm. “Please stop.”

The broken pieces return to the general pile.

“I was thinking,” says Keith slowly, avoiding the plastic Lance was handling and instead tapping a knuckle against the main body still intact, “we could work with what we have here, make sure the inside is still good.”

“And the outside?” asks Pidge sharply, because apparently this is _her_ unnecessary quest and obviously that means everyone else (or mostly just Hunk with a bit of Keith, since they’re the only ones who know how to _build_ ) has to fix it.

“Cardboard?” Keith shrugs. “Outside exterior is nothing, as long as it works.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose. “...Good enough. Get a move on.”

“I have class, Pidge.”

“In twelve minutes,” she replies cheerfully. “ _Get a move on.”_

“I have _class._ Class I pay for with my own mo— _with Macklemore Dollars—”_

“Goats,” says Pidge.

Keith straightens and lays his hands flat on the table. “Right,” he says. “Twelve minutes.” He cuts a sharp look at Pidge. “But after that I’m gone.”

“You can change an entire engine in ten,” she says easily, waving a hand. “I’m not worried.”

“I don’t like you,” Keith says, taking out a hair tie and pulling his hair back.

Besides Hunk, Lance makes a… noise. A ‘ _Chipotle is having a sale and everything is as cheap as the dollar store, and it’s not Macklemore Dollars’_ noise, or maybe an _‘I am currently rethinking all of my life decisions that have lead me to this point, including my lack of devotion to Her Consequential Thoroughness, for which she is surely punishing me by tossing me, like a bag of limp romaine, into this situation’_ noise. Or maybe both.

“Bro,” Hunk whispers, “are you okay? Is Chipotle okay?”

“Chipotle is fine,” Lance wheezes, staring intensely down at the printer pieces. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem very fine. Are you dehydrated? Do you need water? I have water if you’re thirsty—”

“I am,” Lance says, “not that. I am not thirsty. My dehydration is at a healthy level. This is fine.”

Now Hunk’s getting worried. Lance is seriously burning holes into that table, as if the table was one of the offerings used to sacrifice his three-year-old Russian blue cat Elspeth—or, at least, that’s the face he would’ve made if he had a three-year-old Russian blue cat named Elspeth and it was being sacrificed via library table.

Just in case, Hunk decides to ask, “Is your cat okay?”

But instead of saying, “No, Hunk, because I don’t have a cat,” as a reasonable person without a cat is ought to do, Lance says, “My cats are fine.”

Oh, boy.

“...Cats…” Hunk says slowly. “Cats, like… plural? Plural cats?”

“Plural cats. Plural cats are fine,” Lance says.

Oh _, boy._

Hunk begins to run through the list of things that could have possibly launched his best bro into what could possibly be the worst fever of his life. The only plausible item on the list is the breakfast he had that morning—but no, not even that could’ve sent Lance spiralling, because Hunk himself made that food, and Hunk doesn’t fuck up food, because Hunk _knows_ food, and he knows how to make it properly, with no risk to the receiver of such gifts.

So it isn’t the food.

It’s something else.

Hunk leans on his elbow, chin in hand, and _stares_.

Lance doesn’t notice, but Pidge does, interrupting Hunk’s telepathic interrogation by tossing a piece of plastic at his face. Gently.

“Less gazing, more fixing,” she orders.

Hunk wonders why they’re friends.

He turns back to the printer and sighs. Okay, printers really aren’t his thing. He’s a visual arts major—he _sculpts_ things out of clay. Sure, he’s dabbled in mechanics, but that was more building drones and other robotics for competitions and convenience. Sure, he’s also built his own speakers so that his phone is the only one able to connect to it, and his dorm room lights come on via voice, and a mechanical arm hoists his phone up over his face when he’s lying down so _he_ doesn’t have to hold it.

But this is a printer, and he’s never fixed a printer, and Pidge, no matter how many video tabs she has open, doesn’t look the right amount of put off by the fact she’s asking the wrong people. Let it be known, however, that Hunk at least _tries._

So he picks up a few pieces and squints at them and tries to fit them together like it’s a jigsaw puzzle, not a printer.

“Can you pass me that black piece there?” asks Keith.

“Oh, yeah.” Hunk picks up the indicated piece and flips it over in his hand. “It’s missing a couple screws. I’ve got glue, though.”

“Don’t need it,” says Keith, taking the piece and slamming it into another. Hunk winces. It’s only going to get worse and they’re going to be dealing with slivers soon— “Okay, next piece.”

Hunk stares. “Pardon?”

Keith cocks an eyebrow. “Next piece?” He holds up the previous one, which is… together, the seams flush and yet not a screw in sight. “This one’s good.”

“Um.” That’s not right. That _can’t be right._ “Dude.”

“Dude,” Keith says back. “I’ve got eight minutes and half the printer to do. Next piece, please.”

“I,” Hunk says. “That’s. How. Screw. Piece.”

“Piece,” Keith says.

Hunk wordlessly hands it over. This time, he keeps his eyes peeled to see—in real-time, no video manipulation, no editing—how the hell Keith’s doing it, because no matter how he looks at it, it doesn’t make _sense_ for there to be a piece missing screws and then being just completely fine the next—

Keith slams the piece down into the printer. When he removes his hand, it’s whole.

What.

“What,” Hunk says.

Pidge pulls out a glass bottle of peanut-butter flavored hot chocolate and takes a long swig. “Knew I could trust you, Quiche.”

“I better get Macklemore Dollars for this,” Keith grunts, shoving another piece in. His hands are matted with grease, which doesn’t even make sense because there was no grease to begin with, and when Hunk looks up, there’s a smudge of it down his jaw.

“What,” repeats Hunk.

Another noise, this time more along the veins of _‘Chipotle is having a sale and everything requires only a single quarter’_ and _‘Death would be preferable than this situation Her Immaculate Supremeness has, like a basketful of soggy tomatoes, tossed me in.’_

“Elspeth,” Hunk begins.

“I lied and Elspeth is _not_ fucking okay,” Lance whispers, sounding horrified.

And in that moment—Keith, grease-stained; Pidge, typing; Lance, spiralling—Hunk understands. Or maybe _understand_ isn’t the right word for it, but he _knows_.

He also gets to witness Lance make the mistake of gesturing perhaps a bit too frantically at his own face. Wordlessly. So that it takes Keith fixing another unfixable piece of the jigsaw puzzle before noticing that Lance is miming.

“...Yeah?”

Hunk places his hands down flat on the desk and prays to it that whatever Elspeth is being sacrificed to via library table, it is a benign and sympathetic deity. Lance freezes mid-gesture.

“Your face is shitty,” blurts out Lance.

Everyone goes silent. Hunk wonders if burlap is on sale.

“I mean,” squeaks Lance, “there’s shit on your face.”

Keith stares.

“ _I mean_ ,” wheezes Lance, “you’ve got a—it’s—a _thing_ . A smudge. You have a _smudge._ On your face.”

“Oh,” says Keith as if the last fifteen seconds hadn’t guaranteed Hunk’s early return to the earth as a corpse. Except then he reaches up to wipe at the spot Lance indicated, completely missing and getting even more mysterious oil/grease/shit on his cheek.

“Not there,” says Lance, pointing. “Here.”

Keith tries again.

“No, over a bit. A bit more.” Lance’s voice is getting increasingly more frustrated. At least he isn’t shouting about shit anymore. “ _No_ , you’re—God, how do you survive?”

Keith curls his lip. “Just fine! Are you sure you’re not hallucinating?”

“Oh it’s there,” mutters Pidge.

Another swipe at the grease and the stain is beyond hopeless at this point. Lance looks personally offended.

“Just—just let me,” snaps Lance, standing and leaning over the table to swipe a thumb over an unsuspecting Keith’s jaw.

Keith stills. Lance stills. Hunk stills. Elspeth, on his journey to the mysterious deity’s realm, stills.

The only person who has not frozen in the face of this– this _display_ is Pidge, typing away frantically at her laptop.

Lance’s hand is still on Keith’s jaw. And Keith is just— _staring,_ straight at Lance, dark eyes wide and full of _something_. Not moving an inch. Staring at Lance. Staring at Lance. Staring at Lance.

“Um,” Lance says. “Uh.”

Hunk also wonders if kerosene is on sale.

“Yeah,” Keith says, sounding stunned. “Okay.”

After a moment of mutual staring, Hunk decides to take pity on Lance’s gradually purpling face and claps. “Right,” he says loudly, and they both jump, Keith in place, and Lance… Lance violently launching away as if from a Civil War cannon. “Right, so, uh. Printer.”

“Yeah,” says Keith again. He blinks and shifts back to the printer, face going blank. “Printer. Next piece, Hunk.”

Hunk slides it over and retreats. The moment he returns to Lance’s side, he mutters under his breath, “I know what you’re doing.”

“No, you don’t,” Lance says.

“I know _exactly_ what you’re doing.”

“No.”

“I can see right through you.”

“ _No.”_

No amount of staring resolutely at the table surface, however, can save Lance from his _bestest_ best bro’s hawk eyes and elephant brain.

“Less suspicious whispering, more fixing,” interrupts Pidge, staring at them and typing at the same time.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Hunk whispers, tossing Keith another piece.

“Hard pass,” Lance says.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> how does keith do it??? is it magic????¿¿?? is this secretly a magic au and keith is a closet wizard??¿¿ WHO REALLY KNOWS, FOLKS. MAYBE HE'S A VAMPIRE AND LANCE IS IN HIS THRALL????
> 
> an au in which everything is wild but "normal" and then abruptly the tags change to "magic" and "vampires/werewolves" and suddenly coauthor bwyn is getting Ideas™ as she types this but not for this don't you worry


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